Pearce back as the voice of robot death

Sport on television

Giles Smith

Tuesday July 26 2016, 12.01am, The Times

Many are the distinguished sports commentators who have loaned their authority on a freelance basis to one of the less traditional sporting formats in which our era specialises. One thinks of the great Barry Davies, further embossing a CV that already boasted ten World Cups and 12 Olympics by sitting beside the slopes of Kühtai for The Jump, Channel 4’s celebrity winter Olympiad, and bringing his peerlessly precise descriptive powers to, among other things, the sight of Brian McFadden, from Westlife, falling over on skis.

And one thinks of the late Tony Gubba, esteemed veteran of a thousand Match of the Day highlights packages, poised rinkside for ITV’s Dancing on Ice and educating the nation in an entire dictionary of pro-celebrity skating terms —